News for February 2009

The 14th World Sanskrit Conference will be held in Kyoto, Japan on September 1-5, 2009. The organizers would like to inform that the detailed information concerning registration, accommodation, and other practical matters is available at their revised web-site. (From Akihiko Akamatsu, Conference Secretary)

They have thought of a nice way to make some money, advertising those publishers who cannot go to Orlando, and students, besides the usual way of selling a display advertisement in their conference program.They will display materials for publishers in return for the right to sell them at the end of the conference and keep the proceeds. Unsold materials will be donated to their graduate student volunteers.

As usual, the book exhibit will be set up in the same space where twice daily 30-minute coffee breaks will be held to ensure plenty of traffic and browsing time and they will acknowledge the donation in the program.

On February 16, 2009 the Italian Parliament has unanimously approved the Motion Boniver on the initiatives of the government for the protection of human rights and the statement of democratic freedom in Burma. This is the full motion.

The Pakistan government and Islamic hardliners on Monday signed an agreement to enforce the Sharia law in the northwestern Swat valley and to end the fighting. It will also be established a new political administration in the Swat. Articles from The Long War Journal, Pakistan Dawn, Al Jazeera.

Until two years ago, Swat was a jewel in the crown of Pakistani tourism, frequented by foreign and local tourists. For several decades, the Swat valley has been hosting archeological missions, which were first carried out in the Fifties by the IsMEO and promoted by Giuseppe Tucci.

What will happen to the archeological sites? Will they be bombed by the Talibans, as it happened in 2001 to the Buddhas of Bamiyan, in Afghanistan?

China has become a model for Western leading developed economies. The Group of Seven countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S.) said today they are committed to avoiding protectionist measures, and will also try to ensure that the actions they take to combat the recession don't harm other economies. The G-7 has also prased China, welcoming its contributions to combating the global economic slowdown:

On February, 5 2009 the European Parliament has issued a new resolution on the situation of Burmese refugees in Thailand and has strongly condemned the continuous persecution of the Rohingya people, a major Muslim ethnic group of the Northern Rakhine State of Western Burma, by the Burmese Government, which holds prime responsibility for the plight of the refugees.

The ISPI was founded in 1934 and is among the oldest and most prestigious institutes in Italy specialized in international activities. It works under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As regards to the management, it is under the supervision of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, and the Court of Auditors.

After nearly 160 years of despoticism and political and logistic isolation, interspersed by brief periods of democracy, Nepal has entered the international political scene as a state of law. From 2006 to 2008, after ten years of People's War, the movement of the Maoists managed to dethrone the king-dictator, to give voice and power to the ethnic groups, which has always been marginalized, to hold the first democratic elections for the Constituent Assembly, to become a majority party of government and to elect the Prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the former "comrade Prachanda", shaping a new role of Nepal in South Asia.